The Lani People

Mixed emotion! Ha! The author of that cliche didn’t even know its meaning! Kennon strode furiously down the dusty road toward Station One trying to sublimate his inner conflict...

Copper had been acting strangely of late, Kennon thought as he rolled over in his bed and watched her standing before the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. She pivoted sl...

Kennon was morally certain that the Lani were of human stock. Evolved, of course. Mutated. Genetic strangers to the rest of humanity. But human. The spaceship and the redes prov...

“After you have been so brave?” Kennon asked. “That’s nonsense. It’s just nervous reaction. Now web in like I showed you. It’s time for blast-off. We don’t dare wait much longer.”

“I’d never have guessed yesterday that I’d be here today,” Kennon said as he looked down at the yellow waters of the Xantline Sea flashing to the rear of the airboat at a steady...

Longliners, Kennon reflected, didn’t make Beta a port of call, and the Shortliner connections with other worlds were infrequent. Beta had done a good job separating from the res...

“Wake up, Doctor, it’s six A.M.” A pleasant voice cut through Kennon’s slumber. He opened one eye and looked at the room. For a moment the strange surroundings bothered him, the...

It was the last trip. Kennon loaded the jeep with the last-minute items he would need. The four reactor cores in their lead cases went aboard last and were packed inside a pile...

Kennon was startled by the speed with which his letters were answered. Accustomed to the slower pace of Beta he had expected a week would elapse before the first reply, but with...

“I was a poor learner of the redes,” Copper confessed. “And I’ll have to skip the Mysteries. I never even tried to learn them. Somehow I was sure I’d never be a preceptress.” Sh...

There is a special providence that looks over recent veterinary graduates, Kennon reflected as he checked the monthly reports from the Stations. Since the time he had laid down...

“I have plans for that. I’m going back to Kardon and give Alexander a chance to make restitution. I think he is an honorable man. Slavery may be as revolting to him as it is to...

Kennon wondered if his colleagues in human medicine felt toward their patients as he did toward the Lani, or if they ultimately lost their individuality and became mere hosts fo...

The main salon was crowded. The huge room, glittering with mirrors and crystal, floored with thick carpets, and hung with rich drapes, had something of the appearance of a Sarki...

Kennon stopped at Blalok’s house long enough to tell the superintendent what was causing the trouble. Blalok scowled. “We’ve never had flukes here before,” he said. “Why should...

There was a stir of movement in the darkness, the lights flashed on, and a sleepy-eyed Lani blinked at them in the sudden glare. She looked blankly at Kennon and then brightened...

“If you think this job is easy, you have another think coming,” Kennon said bitterly. “I hired out as a veterinarian, not as a nursemaid for a bunch of psychoneurotic humans and...

Douglas Alexander was a puffy-faced youngster with small intolerant eyes set in folds of fat above a button nose and a loose-lipped sensual mouth. There was an odd expression of...

“There are twelve bays to this station,” Jordan said. “Under our present setup two are used for breeding and the other ten for maturation. We rotate the youngsters around the ba...

The boxed ad in the opportunities section of the Kardon Journal of Allied Medical Sciences stood out like a cut diamond in a handful of gravel. “Wanted,” it read, “Veterinarian-...